Odyssey 4.37 · Book 4, lines 37–42
The horses stabled
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ὣς φάθʼ, ὁ δὲ μεγάροιο διέσσυτο, κέκλετο δʼ ἄλλους ὀτρηροὺς θεράποντας ἅμα σπέσθαι ἑοῖ αὐτῷ. οἱ δʼ ἵππους μὲν λῦσαν ὑπὸ ζυγοῦ ἱδρώοντας, καὶ τοὺς μὲν κατέδησαν ἐφʼ ἱππείῃσι κάπῃσι, πὰρ δʼ ἔβαλον ζειάς, ἀνὰ δὲ κρῖ λευκὸν ἔμιξαν, ἅρματα δʼ ἔκλιναν πρὸς ἐνώπια παμφανόωντα,
So he spoke, and Eteoneus sped through the hall, and called the other nimble attendants to follow along with him. They unyoked the horses, sweating, from under the yoke, and tied them fast at the horse-mangers, threw spelt down beside them, and mixed in white barley, and tilted the chariots against the gleaming forewalls.
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The setting
His rebuke finished, Menelaus's order is carried out. The squire and the serving-men take charge of the visitors' team — the standard business of a great house receiving guests of rank.
A note on this passage
A type-scene: the reception of a horse-drawn guest, told in the fixed sequence of small acts — unyoke, tie up, feed, stow the car. Homer runs it briskly, one crisp verb per task, so the household reads as a machine that knows its work.
Two details do more than fill the meter. The horses are ἱδρώοντας, still sweating from the road, a flicker of the real journey behind the ceremony. And the walls the chariots lean against are παμφανόωντα, already flashing — the first glint of a splendor the poem is about to make the young men gape at. The scene-setting quietly turns up the light before the guests even look around.
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